On the Precipice: Stalin, the Red Army Leadership and the Road to Stalingrad, 1931–1942

By Peter Mezhiritsky

Nominated for the 2013 PushkinHouse/Waterstone's Russian Book Prize. Like some astronomers, who discover cosmic objects not by direct observation, but by watching the deviations of known heavenly bodies from their calculated trajectories, Peter Mezhiritsky makes his findings in history through thoughtful reading and the comparison of historical sources. This book, a unique blend of prosaic literature and shrewd historic analysis, is dedicated to events in Soviet history in light of Marshal Zhukov's memoirs. Exhaustive knowledge of Soviet life, politics and censorship, including the phraseology in which Communist statesmen were allowed to narrate their biographical events, gave Peter Mezhiritsky sharp tools for the analysis of the Marshal's memoirs. The reader will learn about the abundance of awkward events that strangely and fortuitously occurred in good time for Stalin's rise to power, about the hidden connection between the purges, the Munich appeasement and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, and about the real reason why it took so long to liquidate Paulus' Sixth Army at Stalingrad. The author presents a clear picture of the purges which promoted incompetent and poorly educated commanders (whose most prominent feature was their personal dedication to Stalin) to higher levels of command, leaving the Soviet Union poorly prepared for a war against the Wehrmacht military machine. The author offers alternative explanations for many prewar and wartime events. He was the first in Russia to acknowledge a German component to Zhukov's military education. The second part of the book is dedicated to the course of the Great Patriotic War, much of which is still little known to the vast majority of Western readers. While not fully justifying Zhukov's actions, the author also reveals the main reason for the bloody strategy chosen by Zhukov and the General Staff in the defensive period of the War. In general, the author shares and argues Marshal Vasilevsky's conviction - if there had been no purges, the war would not have occurred. The book became widely known to the Russian-reading public on both sides of the Atlantic, and in the last ten years its quotations have been used as an essential argument in almost all the debates about the WWII. The book is equally intended for scholars and regular readers, who are interested in Twentieth Century history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781908916754

Book preview

Part One

In memory of all those who fell in the Second World War.

In memory of all the martyrs, not yet deemed worthy of monuments and who didn’t survive to take part in the Second World War.

1

Interlude: Children …

… often died in families. Indeed, in his as well. Yet he, the third born, unfortunately survived in order to destroy tens of millions of people ruthlessly.

Of course, I’m not speaking about Zhukov. I’m talking about his patron, the Supreme High Commander and Generalissimo, Stalin.

Zhukov, though, survived – fortunately. (I anticipate that such an assertion will find many who oppose it. Considered among Russia’s national heroes, Zhukov nevertheless provokes the frenzied howling of neo-Stalinists, who strive to overturn the truth by praising Stalin for the Victory, and blaming Zhukov for the losses.) In the Marshal’s memoirs Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia (Remembrances and Reflections) he hardly touched upon the losses. As a professional, he didn’t even begin to try to exonerate himself: A commander’s duty is to avoid defeats and to conquer, while the cost is a secondary matter. The casualties – not Zhukov’s fault, but not without his participation – were countless, even in vain. However, they were not the victims of the repressions. The strong little boy would live a glorious life, and become a great commander and an idol to millions. In the pantheon of Russian military glory his name stands equal to the names of Peter Rumiantsev and Mikhail Kutuzov. His fame has not been besmirched by the disgrace of repression, like the fame of Suvorov, whose title of Field Marshal had been bestowed by Empress Catherine for the brutal suppression of the Warsaw uprising of 1794. At that time, the banks of the Vistula River had been covered by a medley of the remains of young ladies, children, Jews, Polish nobles and an assortment of random victims. Speed, assessment, hitting power …¹

History is mocking and repeats itself in ways that are difficult to recognize. One hundred and fifty years later, our hero also faced the problem of a Warsaw uprising. The medley of corpses was now the Nazis’ doing, while Stalin kept watch from the Kremlin as his foes consumed each other. It was left for Zhukov to justify his inaction – and he did, thank you. Thanks for the humble admission of his guilt. Zhukov could hardly have been accused seriously; he was a weapon in someone else’s hands.

Indeed, he remained a weapon. The brilliant tactician never played any independent role in politics – fortunately so, I think.

Fate placed him in an exceptional situation. Stalin’s purges, directed at the liquidation of personalities, struck down more than a few strong-willed people even among those, who weren’t drawn into Stalin’s orbit. Zhukov was a strong-willed man – and would remain one. Happily for Zhukov. Happily for the country. He climbed the hierarchical staircase to the highest step not too soon, and so his head remained on his shoulders. With his character, that was a great fortune. In the eviscerated Red Army, he wound up in the necessary place at the necessary time – Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army on that fateful day 22 June 1941. At that time and in those conditions, the key talent was the ability and character to defend one’s opinions. Zhukov did this. He proposed singularly acceptable solutions, and insisted upon them. In that situation under Stalin, no one could have managed to do more.

A fulfilled life. A visible result. He never had the love of his superiors, but glory didn’t pass him by. His name has never disappeared and never will disappear from lips and printed pages.

The memoirs that Zhukov left behind are brief and distinguished.² Though sparing in words, these memoirs are valuable. His omissions are, for the most part, compulsory. There are minimal excuses and none whatsoever regarding Zhukov’s personal decisions.

This book doesn’t aim to topple Zhukov from his rightful place on the pedestal. It has been written with respect for the great commander, for his role in the war, and for the personal courage he demonstrated. At his post as Chief of the General Staff at the start of the war, his courage was topped only by a senselessness and selflessness of the highest order – of the same sort that gripped those heroes who hurled themselves beneath enemy tanks with grenade bundles.

After all, this book is not about Zhukov …

1    Editor’s note: Field Marshal Suvorov was famous for his military aphorisms, such as Train hard, fight easy and Perish yourself, but save your comrade. This is another of Suvorov’s sayings, a well-known, succinct distillation of Suvorov’s philosophy of war.

2    We, the war’s contemporaries, waited a long time for them – the memoirs of the saviors of the Fatherland. The memoirs of all the main military commanders were ghost-written, and in the special case of a particularly prominent individual, the memoirist was assigned journalists by the Party apparatus. Typically in such cases, friendly relations developed between the man dictating his memoirs and the scribes, and the journalists would affably explain to the veterans how to avoid censorship and how to present the material connected with mistakes, defeats, and heavy losses. Exceptions are not only rare, but singular. Only Marshal A. M. Vasilevsky wrote his own memoirs by himself, with the same censorship limitations, certainly. They were not published by Voenizdat [the Soviet military publisher], but by Politizdat [the Soviet political publisher]. Zhukov’s memoirs were also not published by Voenizdat, as would have been natural. They came out from the APN [Agenstvo pechati Novosti – Novost Press Agency]. Through my friend, a laureate of international competitions, the violinist Rafail Sobolevsky, who was a friend of the Marshal’s family, I became aware of the pressure on the Marshal from the Party clique while the memoirs were being written. They demanded silence first and foremost from the Marshal, the omission of unpleasant facts and out of favor heroes, and instructed him to replace them with the glorification of trifles.

2

His origin, according to Zhukov

The childless widow Annushka Zhukov adopted an infant boy, the future father of Georgii Konstantinovich, from a children’s shelter. It is known only that a woman had left the infant on the doorstep of the orphanage with a note: My son’s name is Konstantin. ¹

His father’s own biography has been shaped and crafted so as to make him out to be a Gavroche of the First Russian Revolution.² Soviet power, presumed to remain proletarian forever, prompted such a story in order to give an appropriate revolutionary stamp to Zhukov’s background. Zhukov dedicated his life and sword to this power. An interpretation of his father’s biography beneficial to it ideologically was a small sacrifice.

The later photographs of the Marshal are remarkable. Of course, the years of power have given rise to an imperious expression on his face. With the years, even ordinary faces acquire significance. The features of the commander, however, suggest portraits of grandees. Although his mother was a simple peasant, perhaps Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgii Konstantinovich Zhukov was not.

It is easy to brush the thin coating of ideology from his memoirs – all these ritualistic dances around Marxism and around Lenin personally, which supposedly even country folk knew about back in 1905. We know, though: Lenin attached himself to the villagers, but the villagers – not to Lenin.

1    Although I am not an expert in 19th century mode of life, I do know that there were no orphanages in Russian villages. So, if there was no chance to get an abortion, it was normal practice to hire a cabman to take an illegitimate child of unlawful love to an orphanage. Konstantin by no means could be a name for a country boy of peasant origin. Thus we must assume that Konstantin’s mother was a city woman, and that naturally his father was as well. From which it is clear that we can only guess at the genes of the future commander.

2    Editor’s note: Gavroche is an impoverished character in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, who as a lad joins the Paris uprising of 1834 and is killed while carrying supplies to those manning the street barricades.

3

Interlude: A fixed interest …

… in such insignificant details can prompt bewilderment. However, more significant incongruities will appear ahead, and they have a direct relationship to our theme.

From Zhukov’s childhood, his apprenticeship in Moscow, the First World War and the Russian Civil War, I won’t single out any facts or character aspect, other than to say that the young Georgii was just like the mother, and Ustin’ia Artem’evna was a strong woman, easily able to lift full bags of grain. Zhukov was of medium height. He comported himself just like his character, and what a character he turned out to be! His pugnaciousness showed on his face. There was hardly anyone prepared to offend this young boy, lad, soldier, and unteroffizier¹

1    Editor’s note: An unteroffizier is an old German rank, also used by the Tsarist Russian Army, which is very roughly comparable to junior non-commissioned officer. In World War II, an unteroffizier in the German Wehrmacht was comparable to the American rank of sergeant.

4

Military Education 1

The year is 1916. The place is an unteroffizier training detachment in the city of Izium, Khar’kov Guberniia. The trainees were unlucky with their commanding unteroffizier . He turned out to be a brawler, who liked to knock his subordinates off their feet. The unteroffizier particularly disliked Zhukov, but for some reason avoided striking him. For some reason …

Looking back now on the old [Tsarist] army’s training detachment in general I must say that they taught us well, particularly with respect to formation drills. Every graduate fully mastered equestrian skills, weaponry, and methods to train soldiers. It is not a coincident that many unteroffiziers of the old army … became skilled military commanders in the Red Army.

Many … Skilled … Not Budenny; this swashbuckler, a full Cavalier of St. George¹, hadn’t even learned how to read a map. This merits a mention here, because he with his squadron baggage was entrusted with the command of fronts in the Great Patriotic War.

Where did Georgii Konstantinovich acquire his skill? Not in the unteroffizier training detachment. They didn’t teach strategy there. Topography and maps – perhaps, I don’t know; but reserves, logistics, the ability to maneuver troops and to organize the rear? Whatever, let’s proceed.

The year is 1924. Division commander Gai is asking the young regiment commander how he works to better himself. Zhukov replies that he reads a lot and analyzes operations of the First World War. Gai observed that this wasn’t much, and sent Zhukov to the Higher Cavalry School in Leningrad.

Division commander Gai didn’t overlook the young regiment commander. He didn’t allow Zhukov to linger too long in one place, and gave him a boost upward. G. D. Gai was one of the first commanders of proletarian origin to be arrested (if not the very first). I note this, because it directly touches upon the future leader and his actions …

Zhukov was considered among the best young officers at the school: the exams turned out to be easy, even formal. How else could they have been for such graduates? Had they been any more demanding, guys like Eremenko definitely wouldn’t have passed them, and Eremenko was not one of the worst to survive the purges intact. His sense of optimism nicely served the Stalingrad defense. Of course, had there been no purges, which boosted Eremenko to such a high rank, matters might have never reached the need for a defense of Stalingrad.

V. M. Primakov was commanding the Higher Cavalry School, and Zhukov observes that he (Primakov) was the product of an intellectual family. The orphan Vitalii Primakov was adopted by the great Ukrainian writer Kotsiubinsky and later married his daughter. During his final year of study in high school, Primakov was arrested for revolutionary propaganda. The student later proved to be a gifted military man. A legendary commander of the Chervonnyi Cossacks and a man of letters, who had mastered the spoken and written word, Primakov, of course, made quite an impression on his tongue-tied and inelegantly-writing peers.

G.D.Gai

V.M. Primakov (courtesy of Nina Young)

L.D. Trotsky

The Higher Cavalry School was re-formed into the Cavalry Courses for Improving the Command Staff (Kavaleriiskie kursy dlya usovershenstvovania komandnogo sostava – KKUKS). The period of training was reduced from two years to one year. Their haste was due to a shortage of commanders.

Significantly, though the First World War and Civil Wars are over, the country’s army continues to grow, at a time when its government is proposing a program of complete disarmament to the entire world. Increasing arms, while agitating for disarmament … What is that – counting upon gullibility? Then all these talks about disarmament are just a propaganda stunt? The army is growing, and there aren’t enough officers … Incidentally, there are plenty of officers available, with requisite education, though they had received their commissions in the Tsarist era. But Trotsky had been removed, and Stalin doesn’t like the officers of the former Tsarist army: they do not have the proper mindset or they have preconceptions … It is the same sort of problem that Hitler faces with his officers, with their preconceptions, with their consciences… Yet the Red Army is still growing, and more proletarian commanders have to be graduated from the Courses. We, at our Polytechnic Institute, were stuffed with military education for five years², going over some material repeatedly. A total of four hours a week, but then we had already acquired the general concepts. Even those of us who were on the verge of failing academically didn’t need to learn the difference between degrees of temperature and degrees of angles, or to study the concept of scale, the foundations of physics, descriptive geometry, or the distinction between acid and alkaline. Teach those who have no spatial awareness how to read a map. It isn’t easy for an untrained person to read a map and see the terrain in his mind’s eye. Yet what if the commander is located far from the battlefield, and has no other way to see the theater of combat operations? I’m not even speaking of the planning of offensive operations based on the terrain, occupied by the enemy’s forces.

That’s just a map; and what about the rest of what a commander needs to know? What about chemical warfare, and as part of it the analysis of the difference between decontamination and de-activation? Airplanes, tanks … They guzzle fuel, so you’d better stockpile it. What about many other things? Lubricants? Transportation? Communications?

Oh, one year is not enough! Even just to train a good regiment commander, not to mention a commander like Zhukov. Moreover, at the Courses the main subject of study remained the cavalry sortie. Zhukov writes: Training at the KKUKS concluded with a forced march to the Volkhov River. Here we learned how to swim with the horse and how to force a crossing of a water barrier.

The training regimen wasn’t dense with the learning the tasks that a Chief of the General Staff or a Deputy Supreme Commander would have to face. Clearly, the main subject matter still lies ahead. Well then, let’s proceed.

In 1927 Zhukov is commanding the 39th Regiment of the 7th Cavalry Division. The division commander is Dmitrii Arkad’evich Shmidt, formerly known as David Aronovich Gutman. (A clever man – the Marshal has to say about his commander at the time). Unexpectedly, Egorov, Chief of Staff of the RKKA [Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, known familiarly as the Red Army] and a former colonel in the Tsarist army, arrives at the regiment. The meeting became an event. There was a discussion about forming a second echelon of forces. Zhukov complained about the shortage of personnel in his regiment, and asked how they were to form a second echelon with the available men… Egorov replied, But we have no other way out. One mustn’t underestimate the foe. We need to prepare seriously for the war, to prepare to fight with an intelligent, wily, strong enemy.

Let’s remember those words. Apart from the formal bows in the direction of Marxism and the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), which were plainly not in Zhukov’s style, there are no superfluous words in his memoirs. He had a reason for mentioning second echelons. In their absence lies a secret of the horrors of 1941, though not the entire secret … yet the Chief of Staff of the Red Army is not making polite chit-chat with the inquisitive regiment commander here. Reading Egorov’s reply, you begin to sense just who destroyed the flower of the Red Army’s thinking as it confronted an intelligent, wily, strong foe …

In 1929, Zhukov was sent to the Courses for Improving the Higher Command Staff (KUVNAS). There he studied tactics and the operational art. Book discussions became more concrete. The books of Frunze, Tukhachevsky, Egorov, Shaposhnikov, Uborevich and Iakir appeared.

Zhukov’s memoirs contain a distinctly angry passage on the subject of B. M. Shaposhnikov’s book about the role of an army’s general staff, Mozg armii [The Brain of the Army]:

It is a past matter, but then, even as now, I believe that the title of the book … is incorrect as it applies to the Red Army. The ‘brain’ of the Red Army from its very first days has been the TsK VKP(b) [Central Committee of the All-union Communist Party (Bolshevik)], since not a single major military question was settled without the participation of the Central Committee. This title applies more to the old Tsarist army, where the ‘brain’ actually was its General Staff.

It is possible that not everyone will agree, but this passage – together with this identification of the brain in each case – actually does hit the bulls-eye. It is of course a past matter, as the Marshal stated, but this observation in his memoirs Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia then, even as now (using Zhukov’s expression) is striking, like no other in the book. It is, if you will, the book’s semantic center and a doubtless continuation of an old argument. Someone may see in this passage a high regard for the leading role of the Party, which taught everything to everyone: writers how to write (starting the list with the most painful personally), announcers how to speak, doctors how to treat, teachers how to teach, and military men, of course, how to fight.

Here for the first time Zhukov reveals the source of our failures and losses in the war. This place in the memoirs has been written with the heavy pen of Georgii Konstantinovich himself, in anger and spite. On the surface the statement is irreproachable. What did this TsK VKP(b) alone mean in the epoch of the CPSU? There is also the mention of the Tsarist army, where its General Staff actually was the brain (which Zhukov couldn’t know firsthand, but knew from the acknowledgements of his senior colleague Shaposhnikov, who was a colonel on the Tsarist army’s general staff). Zhukov’s writing style may not be the most elegant, but it mustn’t be forgotten that he knew all the ins and outs of the leading role of the Party, and he was quite familiar with writing documents for later Party review. However, Zhukov was a man who put meaning above all else, who meant what he said, and in this passage he achieved it. His point is clear, and further on in his memoirs, he pays respect to the list of repressed marshals and army commanders, and stresses his admiration for the personality of Tukhachevsky, and his high regard for Triandafillov.

Vladimir Kiriakovich Triandafillov was a gifted military thinker and a Deputy Chief of Staff of the Red Army, who headed its Operations Department.³ He wrote two books: Razmakh operatsii sovremennykh armii [The Scale of Operations of Modern Armies] (Moscow, 1926) and Kharakter operatsii sovremennykh armii [The Nature of Operations of Modern Armies] (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929). In 1931, Triandafillov presented a report to the staff of the Red Army, Basic questions of tactics and operational art. The report laid out a theory of deep battle and represented an attempt, as Triandafillov himself wrote, … to grope for a common, general line in the development of tactics and operations in light of the use of new types of weapons and combat equipment.

The work remained unfinished. On 12 July 1931⁴, a plane crash killed a group of Red Army General Staff officers together with the aircraft’s crew. Among the victims was the Deputy Chief of the Red Army’s Branch of Mechanization and Motorization Kalinovsky. Triandafillov was the senior officer on the flight, which was being conducted by a special designation air detachment. (Back then there were a lot of special designations: CHON – special designation unit; EPRON – special designation expedition for underwater work. However, in the context of events, the name of the air detachment sounds sinister …).

V.K. Triandafillov

The 19th century German writer Ludwig Berne once observed: When Pythagoras unveiled his famous theorem, he sacrificed 100 bulls to the gods. Ever since, when a new truth is revealed, all the beasts tremble.

The cavalrymen and partisan Cossacks were disturbed by Triandafillov’s thoughts. They in turn alarmed the Great Leader, Stalin. He, incidentally, was growing concerned even before Triandafillov’s report and always relied upon his old comrades in the cavalry and partisans. Together with them, he had achieved his legendary exploits in the Russian Civil War; these partisans were dearer to him than any relative. This is not an exaggeration. One need only imagine how the leader thirsted for power over the Red Army, and how insignificant was his authority (deservedly so) and pitiful was his role in it: he and his cronies had merely been swashbucklers of the First Cavalry Army, one of Stalin’s commands in the Russian Civil War! They even convinced Stalin, that he, the Leader and Luminary, would himself at his own leisure elaborate the theory of deep battle. There was no general line for which to grope. There was only one line – their line. The leader could test the theory in practice. He had no need for any Triandafillov; and so the right to think strategically henceforth became a prerogative for only Comrade Stalin.

Perhaps, everything wasn’t this way. Perhaps the cavalrymen were afraid to fly, and they had no need to do it; they possessed a lot of leisure, time had no value to them, and duties were no burden. Triandafillov, on the other hand, in order to save time, flew, and according to the law of chance, subjected himself to a great risk; who knows? …

In a word, the best offensive theorist in the Red Army had perished. In the Tsarist army, Triandafillov had been a staff captain. The cup had passed him by, as it also passed by Shaposhnikov. Triandafillov was actually lucky; he had an easy death. However, as Zhukov said in his memoirs, His works, connected with the future war and [occupying] the most important position in Soviet military strategy and operational art, were unfortunately never completed. This recognition, from the lips of a commander who played a decisive role in that war, tragically signifies much in terms of our immense military losses: he would have liked to have gone to war armed with a strategic doctrine and a developed set of operational principles … By the way, the sense of regret expressed on this topic draws us further into our investigation: after all, Zhukov’s mastery had to have been distilled somewhere, but where?

In the spring of 1931, the KUVNAS [Courses for Improving the Higher Command Staff] audience returned to their units. Just six months – this was plainly insufficient. Plainly insufficient for Khalkhin-gol alone.

1    Editor’s note: In the First World War, Budenny earned all four degrees of the St. George Cross, a medal for non-commissioned officers who demonstrated extreme acts of courage in the face of the enemy. Anyone who earned all four degrees of the St. George Cross became known as a full Cavalier of St. George.

2    In the USSR every man while earning a higher education degree had to receive a military education and the junior lieutenant’s rank as well. The requirements were tough. Those who could not pass the state military exam were refused the civil degree also.

3    Subsequently, this post was occupied by Vasilevsky, Vatutin and Antonov.

4    Twelve years later, on 12 July 1943, as if marking the anniversary of the death of the Red Army’s leading reformers, two tank armadas collided on the field at Prokhorovka. On this day, the Red Army seized the strategic initiative and never let it go until the end of the war. Hardly anyone recalled the name of those, to whom the Red Army owed the mechanization of its forces and the development of a military doctrine befitting them.

5

Interlude: February …

… of the year 1964 proved to be cold and damp. There was no sun; in L’vov, Ukraine, that February it never appeared and neither did it under Poland, namely, until the blessed arrival of Soviet power – the sun from the East.¹ The cold was nipping, down to around 0°C. On a day like that, having received some comp time after my duty as a night director at the factory, I was sitting in a movie theater that showed documentary films. This somewhat long, crooked hall had formerly been a factory shop and was totally unsuitable for a movie theater. The view from the back rows was poor, the heating wasn’t working, and the damp cold was penetrating to the bones. However, I realized that I was utterly frozen only when the screen went dark. The film from the Central Studio of Documentary Films, Geroi ne umiraiut, directed by S. Bubrik, showed photographs that I had not seen many times before, but would later see repeatedly – the young, intelligent faces of the Red Army’s upper command, Zhukov’s peers and teachers.

Then the camera lens passed over their books, which had savage stamps on their covers: BANNED. Banned – what, military thought?

Precisely. From the learned higher command staff of the Red Army, only Shaposhnikov survived;² bestowed the title of Marshal, but broken morally, capable only of proposing and never insisting.

Sitting with benumbed feet in the unheated hall, though, for the first time I saw the cadres of the legendary maneuvers of the Kiev Military District, 12-17 September 1935.³ They were playing out an operation to encircle Kiev and the city’s defense – like what unfolded day to day, six years later, until the city’s surrender. The enemy launched a concentric attack from two directions. The infantry rose to the attack after a powerful artillery preparation and advanced behind a wall of artillery fire. After breaking through the defense into operational space, mobile formations of tanks and cavalry moved out. At the location of the intended link-up to close the ring, a mass airborne landing, like history had never known, was conducted. It had the participation of 2,953 men equipped with, in addition to their carbines, 29 heavy machine guns, 10 field guns, light tanks, and six vehicles. Later, in 1940 the commander of the Kiev Special Military District General of the Army Zhukov, in reply to a question from Stalin about air-dropped tanks in Bessarabia, would answer that the frightened Romanians were only imagining this; there were still no such tanks. So in 1940 there weren’t any, but back in 1935 there were!

At the September 1935 Kiev maneuvers. From left to right: A.I. Egorov, I.E. Iakir, K.E. Voroshilov and S.M. Budenny.

Observing the exercises, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the French Army General Loiseau wrote, The parachute drop of a large combat unit, which I witnessed at Kiev, I consider to be a fact without precedent in the world. The English General Wavell reported to his government: If I hadn’t been a witness to this myself, I would never believe that such an operation was at all possible. Professor von der Heydte⁴ recognized that the parachute accomplishments of the Russians served as a stimulus to the birth of the Wehrmacht’s airborne forces, the Fallschirmjäger, which played a major role in Belgium, Crete and Norway.

As a child of the war, I had listened, holding my breath, to ominous reports and the description of assaults on heights, taken only after repeated bloody frontal attacks. I’d been tormented by the daily spectacle of cripples, just a little older than myself, who’d been left abandoned to the streets by Mother Russia to beg for alms. Later I had learned as well about the absurd lack of cooperation between not only different types of forces, but even within mixed formations. This intelligent warfare I was seeing on the screen made such an impression on me; it was as if a Christmas tree ornament had exploded in my hands and wounded me. This meant that prior to the purges the Red Army had mastered it all! Yet it had all been taken away from the Red Army by the purges! The ability to defeat the foe at little cost!

The maneuvers were directed by the commander of the Kiev Military District, I. E. Iakir, one of the most penetrating military minds of the 20th century, the recognized leader of the Red Army.⁵ These maneuvers were notable not because at them, for the first time in world practice the new theory of deep battle was being worked out, but also because they were not bilateral, but trilateral: another part of the Red Army troops had represented Polish infantry divisions. At the time, Poland’s relationship with the Soviet Union remained rocky. Iakir personally directed the Polish formations, combining this with his overall command duties.

For show in order to warn a potential aggressor, the maneuvers were staged so as to ensure the defeat of the Aggressor and conducted with the use of an unforeseen airborne landing by the adversary. However, the attempt to encircle the city was repulsed. Kiev remained standing. One can’t help but think that six years later, the experience of these maneuvers would have helped hold the Wehrmacht outside the walls of Kiev for as long as it took to grind the plans of Operation Barbarossa into the dust.

At a time when the defeated Germany, which had been kicked out of the family of European nations after the First World War, was looking for ties, Russia was in the same situation. The two sides reached an agreement. The 1922 Treaty of Rappallo knocked a hole in the wall of isolation surrounding each government. Under the terms of the agreement and the secret protocols attached to it – secret protocols already at that time had entered the practice of agreements between countries – the Red Army and the German Reichswehr established contact. The Germans built factories inside the Soviet Union that produced weapons, including chemical weapons, which had been banned to Germany under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In return, Germany shared technology with the USSR and trained Soviet engineers. Within the framework of cooperation, Germany also trained Red Army commanders, who went to Germany in order to undergo an intense program on strategy and tactics. Meanwhile, Reichswehr officers, including the famous Guderian, looked in on the latest Russian novelties and drove tanks around the grounds of the Kazan Tank School, which was subsequently reorganized into an intelligence school.⁶ The Reichswehr overcame the Versailles dam with the Rappallo breach.

Iakir, while studying at the German General Staff Academy in 1927-1928 was invited to give a lecture there on operations of the Russian Civil War. The march of Iakir’s own group of forces, which had been bled white in preceding fighting, from the area of Birzula-Golta through the enemy rear to Zhitomir and Kiev became a classic model of a withdrawal out of enemy encirclement.

Once when the great von Moltke⁷ was compared to Frederick the Great in a burst of effusive praise, he thought for a moment, then rejected the comparison. He had never conducted the most difficult operation in war – a retreat. Iakir retreated with his wounded, artillery, and a wagon train. However, he not only moved for the sole purpose of linking-up again with his own side, he also created havoc in the enemy rear areas in the process. Searching for the least path of resistance as he retreated, he considered the tactical situation as well as the political situation. Playing with the animosities among the opposing forces, he literally slipped through their combat formations.

After the lecture ended, the delighted von Hindenburg gave Iakir a copy of von Schlieffen’s book Cannae with an inscription, the gist of which was "From the Reichswehr‘s senior strategist to the Red Army’s youngest strategist."

The Red Army’s youngest strategist was the first of eight condemned army commanders to be taken away from the courtroom for immediate execution. After him went Primakov, who back during the Polish campaign had disrespectfully addressed the future General Secretary over the telephone, when the latter had withdrawn his 1st Cavalry Army from the Warsaw axis back to L’vov and had simultaneously demanded the Chervonnyi Cossack Corps from Primakov, who was not subordinate to Stalin. From that same time, Stalin had grown to despise Tukhachevsky as well. This Adonis of a front commander by his entire appearance alone vexed the yellow-eyed Stalin. It would have been still better had he been quiet … Having weakened the axis of the main attack (an action which he would later repeat in 1941-1942), Stalin contributed to the collapse of the Warsaw campaign (which had not been promising even without this error), but blamed Tukhachevsky for the failure. The latter defended himself in a mocking and vigorous style.⁸ What Zhukov thought of Tukhachevsky is sufficiently clear in the first draft of his memoir, which percolated through the Communist Party apparatus. However, let’s all the same turn to his memoirs’ 12th edition⁹: We always sensed that he played the main leading role in the People’s Commissariat of Defense.

Later, Zhukov has this to say about a speech that Tukhachevsky gave to an assembly of Party functionaries in 1931:

At the time I was struck by the fact that he had almost nothing to say about Stalin. Sitting next to me at the assembly was the chief of the Red Army’s signals troops, the old underground Bolshevik Longva (Author’s note: one of the first to disappear in the purges), who told me that Tukhachevsky was not a toady, and that he wouldn’t extol Stalin, who had unjustly accused Tukhachevsky for the failure of our operations around Warsaw.

Of course, everyone was supposed to sing the praises of the Leader in any public address. It was striking if someone didn’t; in this case, striking to Zhukov, not just anyone. This means that at the podium, Zhukov, like the others …

Continuing his thoughts on Tukhachevsky, Zhukov says:

Recalling Tukhachevsky in the first days of the Great Patriotic War, we always thought of his mental far-sightedness and the narrow-mindedness of those who couldn’t see beyond the ends of their noses, as a result of which our leadership was not able to develop powerful armored forces in a timely fashion, but were instead creating them during the war itself.

The emphasis is mine; the expression is clumsy, which makes it even more convincing. The Marshal wasn’t a virtuoso of the pen, but this is his own genuine expression.

Sitting in the freezing movie theater, I swallowed bitter tears.

Not all the novelties of 1935 were applied even at Stalingrad. In the area of Kalach, where the ring was closed around Paulus’s army, likely the Red Army leadership was itching to employ a paratroop landing. They didn’t conduct one. The weather shut down flight operations, and this, that and the other…

Of course, the creation of airborne forces was not Iakir’s or Tukhachevsky’s personal idea, nor was it their sole decision to demonstrate what the Red Army was now capable of doing. The aviation industry was still not at all the trump card of the USSR, but having recommended this pageant, the army commanders knew how quick the Reichswehr was with mimicking and adopting. One had to have a lot of confidence in oneself in order to demonstrate such an airborne landing to a potential adversary. The army commanders had this confidence. They knew that they had opened a large gap in front of the best armies in Europe. In 1937, that gap was eliminated.

There is no better praise for the Kiev maneuvers than the facial expressions of the military attaches in attendance. The gentlemen were stunned by the grand display of the military spectacle. Everything had been foreseen, everything scripted, and the foe wasn’t allowed a moment of rest; surprise followed surprise, and the blows came one after the other. Content with the troops’ level of training, the commander was modestly demonstrating it with the maneuvers. The professionals – Tukhachevsky and Egorov – were satisfied. The eyes of People’s Commissar Voroshilov were indifferent; the whiskers of Budenny were puzzled.

By the end of the maneuvers in 1935, Iakir had become an Army General, 1st Rank. Budenny and Voroshilov, though, became Marshals.

At the time, Zhukov was a division commander in Belorussia, and he wasn’t present at the maneuvers. However, this was still a time when the creative experience of any military district was studied everywhere. There are no grounds to speak of a Hannibals or a Scipio in the 20th century. Scipio had to concern himself most with ordering allies to deliver a certain amount of fodder, while Hannibal had to direct elephants with their drivers to a necessary place. Not a single great commander of the past could manage with the scale of modern military operations and the diversity of equipment without specialized training.

Capabilities in combination with at least a minimal education would explain Zhukov’s success in his first military operation of his life. The point is, though, that by then, Zhukov didn’t even have a minimal education. The Course for Improving the Command Staff of the Army is the final training academy in Zhukov’s service record, while the 1935-1936 maneuvers were the last significant military event in the country. The years of banned books and lives ensued. Then there was Khalkhin-gol. Zhukov’s maturity at Khalkhin-gol is inexplicable. Possibly, other sources will explain it.

1    Editor’s note: L’vov was part of Poland from that country’s independence in 1918 until that area’s seizure by Soviet troops in 1939 as part of the secret protocols to the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact.

2    Shaposhnikov, in addition to his unmilitary-like manners and other merits, was plainly gifted with a diplomatic touch as well. The insinuations against Tukhachevsky created material against Shaposhnikov as well, but this material was never pursued. Not a single living soul spoke poorly about Shaposhnikov. This was a Christ in military dress. He exerted colossal influence on the course of the initial stage of the Great Patriotic War – as an adviser. The shock of the purges shortened his life.

3    Editor’s note: The 1935 Kiev maneuvers were designed to test Triandafillov’s and Tukhachevsky’s theories of deep combat, which were quite similar to the Blitzkrieg doctrine adopted by the Germans. In the maneuvers the theory collided against Iakir’s and Uborevich’s theory of active defense and a following counteroffensive, which became later the basis of the Soviet victorious strategy in the Great Patriotic War.

4    Baron Friedrich August von der Heydte, a professor of international law, a veteran of the Crete campaign, a cousin of Klaus von Stauffenberg and an early participant in the plot to assassinate Hitler, as a colonel in 1944 was head of the Wehrmacht parachute school.

5    That’s how Iakir was evaluated by Stalin, who put testimony into the mouths of the victims of the bloody feast, regarding what Iakir had ostensibly planned in the People’s Commissariat of the Navy after Voroshilov’s removal. However, this is just what the Army would have wanted. In the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s, the leading doctrine of the Red Army was the doctrine of smashing, which had also been worked out by Triandafillov. …Iakir attributed little importance to the strategy of destruction. He worked urgently at strategic defense and induced his commander colleagues to do so. The first systems of echeloned defenses were born in the Ukrainian Military District; partisan bases were first developed there in case of retreat. Tukhachevsky’s conversion to strategic defense came about under the unobtrusive but firm influence of Iakir. (Geller and Rapoport, High Treason)

6    My co-worker, a Colonel (ret.) I. A. Kirgizov once told me in confidence – this was back in 1967 – that in 1941 he had been a student of an intelligence school in Kazan’, where they were training cadres for a lengthy residence in China. There were approximately 80 officers in the school with ranks ranging from lieutenant to brigade commander. The training was solid and included not only the Chinese language, but also the history and etiquette, including knowledge of all the ceremonies. They instructed the students how to behave, for which they invited famous actors, in particular Nikita Lian’-Kun’, who had played the role of Kublai Khan in Sergei Eisentein’s film Aleksandr Nevsky. In October 1941 the school, despite Molotov’s protests, was abolished at Stalin’s personal order, and all its students were assigned to the General Staff. We spent the entire war messing around in headquarters no lower than the division-level, Kirgizov acknowledged, and who had the rank of lieutenant in 1941, and no one made any use of us, other than one man – brigade commander Rybalko.

7    Helmurth Karl Bernhard Moltke (1800-1891), Count and German General Field Marshal and Chief of the Prussian (then Imperial) General Staff, was factually the Supreme Commander of the Prussian Army in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. He was a supporter of the idea of deploying the Prussian Army close to the national borders and initiating surprise attacks, launching forces from different areas toward a common objective (March separately – fight together) in order to take the enemy in the flanks and to destroy him in a grand battle, and then to obtain victory in a rapid war. He can indeed be considered the founder of the idea of "Blitzkrieg", which became so attractive to the Prussian school of war.

8    During the Polish campaign, Tukhachevsky, who earned distinction for successfully routing General Denikin in earlier battles, commanded the main offensive of Red Army forces advancing north of Warsaw. Meanwhile, Stalin was the main political commissar assigned to the forces of the Southwestern Front under the command of Egorov, whose units included the now infamous First Cavalry Army, or Konarmiia, led by Semyon Budenny, which was attacking near Lwow. The Southwestern Front failed to quickly execute the orders received from Moscow to move north from Lwow to Warsaw. Stalin, as chief political commissar, refused to cosign with Egorov the Moscow order to move north and join Tukhachevsky’s Western Group and was recalled for his insubordination. The army was turned back at Warsaw and dreams of fomenting revolution to the west were crushed. Tukhachevsky, in a fateful move, assigned the blame for the defeat to the failures of Stalin’s Southwestern Front and went on to analyze those failures in his lectures at the Military Academy. What made matters worse, perhaps, is that even Vladimir Lenin agreed with Tukhachevsky’s assessment, asking, Who on earth would want to get to Warsaw by going through Lwow? Some twenty years later, Stalin apparently placed the blame for the failed campaign squarely on Tukhachevsky’s shoulders, charging him for his criminal delay. (Sally W. Stoecker, Forging Stalin’s Army, Westview Press, 1998.)

9    The Marshal’s Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia [Recollections and thoughts] immediately became so popular in Russia that it was published every three to four years in enormous printings. The first, 1969 edition, was heavily pruned by the censors. Later, as new editions came out, the demands of the censors were softened, until at last perestroika made the entire text, dictated or written by the Marshal, accessible to readers. While writing this manuscript, I had in my hands the 2nd Edition, which was published in August 1974; that is, already after the memoirs’ author had passed away. Although later editions became available to me as I worked on this manuscript, I decided to stick with the 2nd Edition, in order to be able to show the readers simultaneously how Soviet ideology redacted and distorted history, in particular the history of the Second World War.

6

Military Education 2

In the first edition of this book, I introduced the testimony of the German General von Mellenthin that Zhukov received a solid military education from Reichswehr training courses within the framework of the aforementioned military cooperation between the two armies stemming from the Treaty of Rappallo. Even until recent times, this matter was kept concealed from the Russian reader, and my mention of the German component in Zhukov’s education was met with the dagger points of Russian veterans even in America (which should have been expected). Not knowing when it was, and doubting in the date that von Mellenthin gives, I dated his training in Germany from the beginning of the 1930s. ¹

Von Mellenthin, the scion of an ancient Prussian line and on his mother’s side a direct descendent of Frederick the Great, began World War II as a major and ended it as a major-general in the position as Chief of Staff of Army Group G on the Western Front. Today, von Mellenthin’s book has become mandatory reading for all generals. Writing in it about the grand offensive of Soviet forces on the Middle Don against the Italian 8th Army, the timing of which was so successfully chosen that it instantly put an end to all of von Manstein’s hopes to free Paulus’s army, von Mellenthin mentions Zhukov. Precisely in relation to the timing of this offensive, there is an amusing digression in von Mellenthin’s narration of this episode of the war to which we will later return when discussing the Red Army’s Stalingrad offensive operation. Here, however, I’m speaking about something else. Having mentioned Zhukov, von Mellenthin makes a juicy statement:

It is not generally realized that Zhukov previously received much of his early training in Germany … For a time he was attached to the cavalry regiment in which Colonel Dingler was serving as a subaltern. Dingler has vivid recollections of the uproarious behavior conduct of Zhukov and his companions, and the vast quantities of liquor which they were accustomed to consume after dinner. But in the military sphere it is clear that Zhukov’s time was not wasted.²

It is an irony of fate. Zhukov, who received a formidable mastery of warfare from the Reichswehr, became a weapon in the defeat of the Wehrmacht. Just as the enemy gave a hand to the military education of its eventual conqueror, the USSR gave one to the re-arming of the foe. Why conceal this? It didn’t embarrass those, whose names Marshal Zhukov mentioned with special respect. The Soviet and German military schools were running neck and neck in their development. Zhukov’s cover-up of the fact of his time in Germany is, I would say, of a persistent nature:

In April 1941 … Stalin called me:

‘Japan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Matsuoka is returning to his homeland after a visit to Germany’ he said. ‘You must receive him politely.’

‘What are your instructions?’

‘Mantsuoka simply wants to get acquainted with you.’

I didn’t even start to puzzle over the matter: plainly, Mantsuoka still had the events of Khalkhin-Gol fresh in his memory.

Several days later the chief of Department of Foreign Relations of the People’s Commissariat of Defense informed me that Mantsuoka and an interpreter would appear before me within two hours. Precisely at the appointed time, the door opened, and Yosuke Mantsuoka entered, bowing deeply.

I politely greeted him, inquired about his health and asked whether he was tired from the trip. The minister replied noncommittally:

‘I love long journeys. It was my first time in Europe. Have you ever been in European countries?’ he asked in return.

‘Unfortunately, no’ I replied, ‘but at a suitable time I will of course try to visit. I’ve read a lot about Germany, Italy and England, but even the best book cannot provide a complete picture of a country. You get a much better understanding of a nation, its customs and its ways through a personal visit and contacts.’"

Zhukov had read von Mellenthin’s book and was indirectly contradicting him. However, he passed over in silence von Mellenthin’s remark about Zhukov’s training in Germany. If von Mellenthin was mistaken, then why didn’t the Marshal openly say so?

Not wishing to touch upon this topic in the pages of his memoirs, the Marshal understands that he needs to explain the source of his military knowledge to the readers:

As the commander of the 6th Corps, I labored intensively over operational-strategic questions, since I believed I still had much to learn in this area. My personal working-out of operational-tactical assignments at sessions of divisional and corps command games, command staff exercises, force maneuvers, etc.

That is just it – etc., since now he is referring to other levels of command – corps, 6th Corps, almost the army!

There is the testimony of Bagramian that Zhukov often remained behind to pore over maps, even as his peers were leaving for some recreation or amusement. Possibly that’s just the way it was in Germany as well. Brigade commander Zhukov was not the only Red Army officer to receive training there…

So, he learned from the future enemy. After all, in the military sphere the foe had long been considered the world’s leading specialist. It was no shame to study under the enemy’s tutelage; this had been a Russian tradition since Peter the Great. Why not acknowledge it?

There is no reliable explanation. Likely it was not permitted by the editor. In the first edition of his memoirs Zhukov wrote nothing about his studies in Germany, and he didn’t live until such permission might have been granted… Incidentally, nothing remains of his time in Germany in his papers either. Perhaps he fell short in his studies there. Von Mellenthin believes that with respect to military matters, Zhukov didn’t waste any time in vain. However, the self-demanding Marshal knew that in his youth he lost time over libations, and never learned about the German people, their ways and customs at a time when all this could have been gained for free, while he was posted in Germany, and not later, when such knowledge would come at a high price. Perhaps he could have learned even more about the Germans than their ways and customs. Possibly there were more substantive gaps in his knowledge. No one knew this other than him, and no one will ever know. Had I been in the Marshal’s place while writing the memoirs, I would not have mentioned the fact of military training in Germany either.

1    One respected Soviet veteran (and later author’s friend) living in the United States, after a presentation of the book (at which he was not present, though heard about later through conversations), searched out the author in order to tear him to pieces, and upon finding him, shouted at the top of his lungs that the author was lying. Today, the fact that Zhukov received training in Germany is recognized, though sullenly so. In the Russian translation of von Mellenthin’s book Panzer Battles, this remark has been omitted, as well as other unpleasant passages. It turned out that Zhukov’s training in Germany took place almost immediately after Rappallo, that is somewhere around 1923-1924.

2    Major-General F. W. von Mellenthin, Panzer Battles (Ballantine Books, NY, 12th printing, 1990), p. 233, n. 2.

7

A Promotion

It occurred after his foreign assignment and work as a Red Army cavalry inspector. In describing this period Zhukov gives much attention to the General Headquarters of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army and is filled with admiration for its global designs. However, the cavalry inspectorate was not subordinate to the General Headquarters, but to Budenny personally – an exception that permitted Stalin to create his own body of troops, like the Red Army’s Mamelukes. Zhukov was far from the Red Army’s General Headquarters, and this served to link the fates of Budenny and Zhukov, facilitated Zhukov’s subsequent rise in command, and possibly saved his life during the time of the purges.

A description of events between 1931 and 1933 is lacking in Zhukov’s memoirs because of the absence of any noteworthy events. At the time Zhukov, it must be supposed, had adequate possibilities for drinking sessions with the legendary hero of the Russian Civil War and to get closer to him, but this was not in any way a result of sycophancy. They became close through Budenny’s initiative, and this was natural, given their similar background and cultural level at that time. Zhukov, like Budenny, was a dashing cavalryman, and an equine expert and lover of horses. He, a horseman and campaigner to the core, was interested in nothing else beyond military matters. To his great luck, his hobby coincided with his career. Incidentally, the horseman was also a disciple of mechanization and increasing force mobility.

His promotion to division commander was deserved. Higher command asked Zhukov to accept the promotion, and he agreed. However, Zhukov didn’t assume command of just any division! He took over the 4th Don Voroshilov Cavalry Division, which at one time had been the nucleus of the 1st Cavalry Army. Its chiefs were men, who had been close to the ruling elite. Formerly the division had been based in Gatchina, Peterhof, and Tsarskoe Selo – in places specially equipped and adapted for housing mounted Guards units, with stables, equestrian arenas, parade grounds and training fields. As a result of negligence, bungling or intrigue (all three occurred; among those who fell in the repressions, many were casualties of the settling of personal scores in all the government institutions, and even more so in the army), the division was hastily transferred to Slutsk in Belorussia, a remote, backwoods place unequipped for a cavalry division. Under tsarism, this would have contributed to an improvement in the local gene pool. Under socialism, as Zhukov describes:

‘ … the superbly trained division has become a poor construction unit’ … With his characteristic hot-headedness [Belorussian Military District commander] Uborevich reported to the People’s Commissar of Defense Voroshilov on the condition of the 4th Cavalry Division and was demanding the immediate removal of the division commander Kletkin. … Uborevich’s report was extremely unpleasant for Voroshilov: he had been tied by blood for many years to this division, and had more than once gone on the attack in its ranks.

Thus, Zhukov was appointed commander of the Voroshilov Cavalry Division, and by the will of fate he was thrown together with those who during the purges happened to suffer significantly less than others.

The further development of relations between Budenny and Zhukov is curious. Amidst the purges, during an inquiry into a personal matter which was described in later editions of Zhukov’s memoirs, then corps commander Zhukov was accused of boorishness and arrogance (Let those without sin …), the baptism of his newborn daughter Ella, and worst of all being close to the enemy of the people Uborevich. Budenny was undoubtedly asked about Zhukov. I assume that the cavalry chief stood up for his swashbuckling drinking buddy. Later Zhukov didn’t forget this and bailed his former commander out of trouble in what was now not a paper matter, but the battle for Moscow – and mentioned this more modestly in his memoirs than it really deserved…

Its new commander didn’t find the division in such a shabby state as the District commander Uborevich had described to People’s Commissar Voroshilov – with the clear intention to nettle him: they were, after all, in opposing circles. Zhukov, who was not inclined to paying compliments, twice in different places in his memoirs calls attention to 3rd Cavalry Corps commander L. Ia. Vainer, to whom the subordinate 4th Cavalry Division and the entire corps owed their combat training. Even before arriving at his new post, when asked about the 4th Cavalry Division, Zhukov replied that he … was well-acquainted with the commander of the 3rd Cavalry Corps L. Ia. Vainer; I consider him to be a capable military commander. Then again: … the 3rd Chongar Kuban-Ter Division, which was excellently trained, stood out, especially in the areas of tactics, fire and mounted maneuver (in other words, in all categories of evaluation – author’s note). Its former commander L. Ia Vainer, who exerted much effort and energy for this, must be given his due …

Don’t even try to find Vainer’s name among the list of heroes of the Great Patriotic War.¹ Corps commander Vainer refused to believe in the guilt of the army commanders and disappeared in the purge. Dovator², the corps commander’s worthy disciple, was at the time of the purges a squadron commander in Vainer’s division, then Vainer’s corps, so his life was spared. But that is by the way…

Of course, in his new post Zhukov exerted his extraordinary energy to raise the division to a higher level of readiness. He slept little – and didn’t allow others to sleep either. Within a year, Uborevich once again made a surprise attempt to vex the pitiful People’s Commissar [Voroshilov], but failed to catch Zhukov unawares. The 4th Cavalry Division was unexpectedly alerted and ordered to march to the border, but Zhukov’s troopers showed class and conducted the training march in commendable fashion. Uborevich had badly wanted to embarrass and reprimand the division that bore the name of Voroshilov with this surprise order – but failed. People’s Commissar Voroshilov remained contented…. Zhukov notes:

The year 1935 was marked for us by major events. … The division was awarded for its training successes with a higher government honor – the Order of Lenin. I was also awarded with the Order of Lenin. That year was memorable for us military men for another measure, undertaken by the Party to raise the authority of the command cadres – the introduction of personal military titles. Bliukher, Budenny, Voroshilov, Egorov and Tukhachevsky became the first Marshals of the Soviet Union.

The first marshals. Seated left to right: M.N. Tukhachevsky, K.E. Voroshilov, A.I. Egorov. Standing: S.M. Budenny and V.K. Briukher.

It was around this time, apparently, that Zhukov’s friendship with Uborevich began. The army commander valued Zhukov’s professionalism, and no matter how much contempt he held for Voroshilov, he didn’t transfer this attitude to the People’s Commissar’s protégé, the hard-working and straightforward brigade commander in charge of the 4th Cavalry Division. So Uborevich recommended Zhukov for a promotion. Zhukov received the second bar on his collar patch and became a division commander; he remained at this rank until 1937. (We’ll note that Rokossovsky at the time was soaring up the ladder of ranks in advance of Zhukov. He had been a division commander and Zhukov’s direct superior back in 1931). It is impossible not to

Reviews for On the Precipice

[kunikov_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As Stuart Britton, the translator, explains, Peter Mezhiritsky doesn’t so much tell a story as engage in a dialog with the reader. In general this is something that’s rather more common in Russian historical literature (mainly when written by hobbyists and journalists) but it comes with strengths and weaknesses. Many assertions are offered, poetic licenses taken, and guesstimates proposed with the end result being the author is showing the numerous blank spots that are evident even in today’s literature that deals with both the history of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Front. In the end, this style works well enough with both the pre-war Soviet period and the Second World War because some revelations will remain a mystery to us while others are gathering dust in still inaccessible archives. Thus when Mezhiritsky, for instance, questions the level of Zhukov’s education and where his genius originated – was it in short Soviet courses during the 1920s or when he studied in Germany thanks to the Treaty of Rapallo? – it gives the reader something to think about and chew over. Unfortunately, Zhukov either never left an account of his time in Germany or it is buried among his papers in Russian archives, but to this day we don’t know what impact that time had on him and how much of an influence it had over future studies and his time in the field throughout the Second World War. An additional strength of this text is encompassed in some of the more interesting asides and accounts dealing with the author’s personal recollections about the war. He witnessed June 22 as a seven year old in Kiev and experienced the fear and chaos of evacuations firsthand, as well as the condition the country found itself in as Germany’s armed forces enjoyed continued success in the first months of the invasion. The majority of the text follows Zhukov’s career with quite a few detours into Soviet history. Stalin features regularly but one needs to keep in mind that the book is not wholly about Stalin and his actions, but rather his impact on Zhukov and the Soviet Union as a whole. In many ways this text resembles dissident polemics of the Cold War period, which also means that dissident ideas come to the forefront. For instance, Mezhiritsky holds Stalin’s genius for planning and cunning in high regard, but there are today many questions that have been raised and answered about Stalin’s role in the purges and the direction Soviet foreign policy assumed in the 1930s. While I don’t fully agree with all Mezhiritsky’s ideas, I will say they still provoke questions that need to be asked and for which we are still missing concrete answers. And in the end Mezhiritsky himself understands that much of what he writes is in the form of ‘suppositions’ that are in desperate need of ‘supplementary research’. This also applies to the author’s thoughts on Operation Barbarossa, including its planning and execution. These days I am in agreement with David Stahel’s work, ‘Operation Barbarossa and Germany’s defeat in the East’ (which Mezhiritsky is aware of and addresses), that shows through meticulous research Germany’s plans for subduing the Soviet Union were flawed from the beginning and doomed to failure. Mezhiritsky, however, has highlighted some interesting ideas but I would argue that he is missing the forest for a few select trees. Anecdotal evidence is interesting to come by, and he has plenty to offer having lived through the war, but the overall situation is much harder to grasp within the framework that he’s created.An added contribution of Mezhiritsky’s is the introduction of a plethora of characters, personalities, and ideologues that few in the west are familiar with. His concentration remains on the Red Army so many of those introduced participated in the creation of the Red Army or became famous/infamous among Red Army circles. The culmination point, in many instances, is the purge of the Red Army in 1937, but there were numerous deaths that occurred before that year. For some there are accepted explanations (Frunze, Triandafillov, etc.) but for many others, strange circumstances surround their demise and to this day a conclusive answer still eludes historians (what happened to General Kotovsky is one example). Additionally, there are references to events and battles that continue to be missing from the mainstream narrative of the war. Although I have studied the Eastern Front for over a decade, Mezhiritsky’s mention of an attack by a reinforced 20th army around the summer of 1942, and an ensuing tank engagement that featured some 3,000 tanks is an event I can’t recall coming across previously. And it is certainly an operation that is in need of greater study and analysis. Finally, some of the most interesting commentary is offered around the battle for Stalingrad. Once more, a meticulous reading of both Zhukov’s and Vasilevsky’s memoirs raises more questions than we have answers for, but also shows how shrewd one has to be to ‘read between the lines’ of Soviet era publications. There are, unfortunately, minor grammatical problems throughout the text, but many can be overlooked as the translator tried to retain the original ‘richness’ that Mezhiritsky wrote into his text. Another problem is encountered when chapter sixteen ends in the middle of a sentence. Perhaps a word is missing, as the sentence is clear enough in where it’s going, but there is no period at the end. Additionally, somewhere along the line a corrupted image/picture of General G. I. Kotovsky somehow made it into the book. Aside from the grammatical problems, there are some incorrect facts presented, as when the author claims the Luftwaffe lost only 17 aircraft on 22 June (pg. 200), when in fact total losses for the day were 78 with another 89 damaged. This doesn’t change that the Soviet Air Force lost a great deal more aircraft, but 17 is not 78. Another mistake is the mention of a Polish cavalry charge against German tanks as a well-known fact. While it might be well-known it certainly isn't a fact (315). In the end Mezhiritsky accomplishes what he’s set out to do. He provokes, prods, aggravates, upsets, angers, and incites the reader to want to know more about the Soviet Union, the Eastern Front, leading men like Yakir, Gamarnik, Bliukher, and Tukhachevsky, and the multitude of men and women who gave their lives either as a sacrifice to the system that Stalin attempted to create and perfect, or the German war machine that almost achieved its destruction.